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One study I found fascinating and counter intuitive was that researchers found that the more "gender equal" a country is the fewer women in STEM. Basically they found that in less gender equal countries such as UAE and Tunisia there's a far higher percentage (40%) of women in STEM than in countries where women have more equal rights such as Finland and Norway (20%).

What’s more, the countries that minted the most female college graduates in fields like science, engineering, or math were also some of the least gender-equal countries. They posit that this is because the countries that empower women also empower them, indirectly, to pick whatever career they’d enjoy most and be best at.

“Countries with the highest gender equality tend to be welfare states,” they write, “with a high level of social security.” Meanwhile, less gender-equal countries tend to also have less social support for people who, for example, find themselves unemployed. Thus, the authors suggest, girls in those countries might be more inclined to choose stem professions, since they offer a more certain financial future than, say, painting or writing.

...

The upshot of this research is neither especially feminist nor especially sad: It’s not that gender equality discourages girls from pursuing science. It’s that it allows them not to if they’re not interested.

This might relate more to the differences between science and humanities funding and support noted above.

As ever, it's worth reading the orginal article.
The authors suggest that, in countries where women have greater financial security and job equality, they'll make career choices based on personal preference rather than taking their best bet for financial independence.
Trouble is, the Global Gender Gap Report index (used to measure "gender equality") doesn't give us any indication of the prevalence of sexist attitudes within/to STEM professions. So women with more financial security and wider job opportunities may simply be avoiding STEM because it's a crap environment in which to work, or because they've been told at school that STEM is not a good career choice for a girl, and they should target other interests. Whereas women in countries that afford them fewer opportunities, who have always coped with a generally sexist society, may be just putting their heads down and going for it as their best bet for independence. That hypothesis has the benefit of being supported by reports from women in countries with reasonable GGGR indices (for instance, UK, USA), who are saying that they would like to pursue a career in STEM, but are being put off by the sexist culture. Countries in which women are liberated to pursue exactly their dream job in a non-sexist environment (which is what the authors suggest) would generate no such reports. So there's a distinct plausibility problem when we try to align the authors' hypothesis with the real world.

I'd also suggest that those scatter plots essentially show a big circular blob, and the reported correlation is driven by a few strong outliers. We need to know more specifics about those outliers.

As the authors say:

Future research that includes more potential confounders is needed, but such data are currently unavailable for many of the countries included in our analysis.

Note:
During life, we all develop attitudes and strategies to make our interactions with others more pleasant and useful. If I mention mine here, those comments can apply only to myself, my experiences and my situation. Such remarks cannot and should not be construed as dismissing, denigrating, devaluing or criticizing any different attitudes and strategies that other people have evolved as a result of their different situation and different experiences.

Sadly, reports like that tend to get boiled down to some simplistic sound byte, after removal of all relevant caveats. All too often, this also removes the validity! Science to most people: blah, blah, blah, conclusion, done.

I have heard many people, anecdotally, who think a significant problem for women in STEM fields, other than sexist attitudes of peers and even guidance counselors, is the male/female asymmetry of childbirth. Even societies that allow women to take time off for pregnancy and childbirth, and foster male contributions to child rearing, often find that the childbirth years end up removing women from STEM fields. The idea is, in many STEM fields you cannot afford to have a 3-5 year period early in your career where your productivity is reduced, as this is often the crucial period where you need to be most productive to prove yourself. This piece of the problem does not explain the loss of girls from STEM fields in high school, or the big dropoff often seen going from high school to college, but it might contribute to the drain found in the post-doc years.

Anecdotally, many women find it necessary to forgo childbirth, or at least put it off until they are already established in their career. It was mentioned above that the medical profession has navigated this issue, and I don't know if that is because female doctors are also waiting until they are established, or if it is simply because productivity in terms of writing papers and so forth is not as crucial in the 25-30 year age range as it is in fields like physics. The anecdotal evidence to which I refer is that in our physics and astronomy department, the last three women hired as faculty members were all married and childless when hired. Since they were all in their late twenties early thirties, I wager that is a rather rare demographic outside of STEM fields. On the other hand, men hired as faculty in their late twenties early thirties seem to often have young children. So even if we manage to remove sexist attitudes from STEM fields, it seems likely that the gift of being able to bring new humans into the world will always remain as a burden for women in STEM to navigate. They might wish to put off childbirth to the early thirties, and that comes with its own issues.

Since our society wishes to repopulate itself, it seems unfair to count this power against women when hiring decisions are made. After all, a scientist's career spans 40 years or so, and only 3-5 of them can have reduced productivity due to childbirth-- it just happens to be the most important 3-5 years for getting hired. For this reason, it seems completely fair to reduce the expectations on the productivity of women who are bearing children at the time. So not only do we need to squelch attitudes that disfavor women just because they are not what we are used to in STEM fields (the attitude so blatantly expressed by Struvia), we even need to go a step farther and recognize the special challenges women face-- if we want STEM-capable women to reproduce, and still get the benefit of their potential contributions to STEM fields.

Three years later: gender differences in the advisor's impact on career choices in astronomy and astrophysics

Rachel Ivie, Susan White, Raymond Y. Chu (Submitted on 28 Nov 2018)

The Longitudinal Study of Astronomy Graduate Students (LSAGS) arose from the 2003 Women in Astronomy Conference, where it was noted that a majority of young members of the American Astronomical Society were women. The astronomy community wishes to make every effort to retain young women in astronomy, so they commissioned a longitudinal study to be conducted that would pinpoint the factors that contribute to retention in general, with a focus on differences between women and men. The LSAGS follows a cohort of people who were graduate students in astronomy or astrophysics during 2006-07. The first survey was conducted during 2007-08, the second during 2012-13, and the third during 2015. The analysis presented in this paper, which is an update to our previous paper on this topic, used a subset of the respondents, all of whom had PhDs in astronomy, astrophysics, or a related field at the time of the third survey. We tested the effects of four major concepts on attrition from physics and astronomy. These concepts included: the imposter syndrome, mentoring and advising during graduate school, the so-called "two-body problem" that occurs when a couple needs to find two jobs in the same geographic area, and gender of the respondent. Having a mentor in grad school did not contribute to working outside of physics or astronomy. Showing characteristics of the imposter syndrome and gender of the respondent had indirect effects on working outside the field. Encouragement of the graduate advisor, the two-body problem, and completing a postdoc, had significant direct effects on working in physics or astronomy. This research identifies specific areas of concern that can be addressed by the scientific community to increase the retention of all people, but especially women, in astronomy and astrophysics.

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
— Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (1883)

I'm a male in STEM I wonder if there's something inherently more creepy in my male peers than the males in non-STEM fields.

Be assured that sexual harassment is not limited to STEM, and if women are not actively pushed out of other fields, they certainly still encounter the "glass ceiling." They are still paid 70 cents on the dollar for the same work, and still find themselves training a man promoted over them to do a job they were more qualified for. I've talked with women in almost any field who say they don't know any woman who doesn't have stories of personal harassment based on their gender. They usually say they just look the other way, it would be even worse for them if they tried to do something about it. Witness Christene Ford. So this is one of the reasons sexual harassment is so widespread and is such a problem for women in STEM-- there is a perception that whistleblowers are not appreciated by the powers that be. As a result, whistleblowing is so rare that it's hard to even know what effect it is having, I can't think of a single example from personal experience, only rumor and innuendo.

This research identifies specific areas of concern that can be addressed by the scientific community to increase the retention of all people, but especially women, in astronomy and astrophysics.

It seems to me that "retention of all people" in astronomy is not a realistic goal-- there are few jobs that go unfilled! If you want to retain more people, you need to generate more funding, not better retention strategies. So the issue with retention is to keep the people with the greatest potential to contribute to the field, and if women are discouraged, then we miss out on the Marie Curies of the future. Also, I wonder how much of the "two body problem" actually comes down to "young couples having children, so the woman has an especially big distraction from her career."

I'm male. When I was younger I was definitely made fun of by my peers for liking maths and science. This is commonly known as nerd-bashing which seems to be culturally accepted/tolerated (at least when I was growing up). It didn't stop me though, because I knew they were idiots and nothing would stop me from my passion.

I wouldn't be surprised if there are some cultural/gender differences in how girls and boys deal with teasing and bullying. In general, girls seem more sensitive to the opinions of others, and this may be why a lot of them leave STEM in high school. Or maybe it's just that you had male role models to give you confidence your passion could work out, whereas girls often don't have that.

Anecdotally, many women find it necessary to forgo childbirth, or at least put it off until they are already established in their career. It was mentioned above that the medical profession has navigated this issue, and I don't know if that is because female doctors are also waiting until they are established, or if it is simply because productivity in terms of writing papers and so forth is not as crucial in the 25-30 year age range as it is in fields like physics.

We just decoupled the idea of "productivity" being necessary within some particular span of years - you need to have a competitive CV when you start applying for consultant jobs, but how long it took you to get to that point isn't really considered relevant, except insofar as you'd need to demonstrate you weren't sitting around idle while in an active training post.

A long time ago there was a change in the nature and names of the various training grades in UK medicine. One of my female colleagues, who was in training at the time, had three children during her time as a Senior Registrar (a grade someone on a direct career track would typically enter in their late twenties, with a view to applying for consultant jobs three or four years later). So for a period of about three years, she was the Last Senior Registrar in Scotland, everyone else in that grade having moved on in some way, and all new training appointments being to the new training track. She actually became the focus of some nostalgia, because all her senior colleagues thought the abolition of the SR grade was pretty much an outrage, since it had served us well for many years.
So. I was working with her one evening just before she was due to finally be signed off with the last ever Higher Professional Training certificate. We were discussing the availability of consultant posts in the near future, and I remarked, "Of course, you've been in the old Senior Registrar grade for so long there's no hope of you getting a consultant job."
I waited for the looks of alarm, horror and then deep suspicion to cross her face, before continuing, "Because we're going to have you bronzed and engraved and set up as a monument outside the Royal College."
She punched me right in the middle of the chest. Quite hard.

Note:
During life, we all develop attitudes and strategies to make our interactions with others more pleasant and useful. If I mention mine here, those comments can apply only to myself, my experiences and my situation. Such remarks cannot and should not be construed as dismissing, denigrating, devaluing or criticizing any different attitudes and strategies that other people have evolved as a result of their different situation and different experiences.

I agree I should not have said "for the same work," I should have said "for whatever work men will hire them for." In other words, the wage disparity combines two factors, the wage for the same work and the smaller number of higher-paying jobs given to women. The problem seems more pronounced for that latter category. Also, since minimum wage earners are protected from wage discrimination by law, they are not the cohort of interest here, so I would think a rather obvious thing to do would be to remove all minimum wage earners from any such study, though the article cited does not do that. The article did say that a study of college graduates finds the discrepancy is more like 7 percent when the "same work" is included (i.e., controlled for profession), but it only looked a year after college graduation! Obviously a "glass ceiling" effect will not be encountered so quickly, that they see any difference at all is already significant. Try not looking one year, but rather 20 years, to see what the actual problem is.

Incidentally, the article also says " But if broken down by narrow groups, research shows single, childless women in their 20s in major metro areas outearned male peers, specifically in Atlanta by 21 percent and by 12 percent in Los Angeles." The author of the article did not seem to find the obvious significance in the fact that you have to remove women with children from the cohort in order to find a wage advantage for women. This clearly suggests that the complementary group, women with children, would show an even greater wage disparity, adding additional credence to the idea that choosing to maintain our population is one of the barriers for women to achieve high-paying jobs. I think that's an important issue for high-paying STEM jobs. Do we really want our women to choose between high-paying careers and having children? As a man, I never even considered that having children could affect my earning potential.

Why do we wrangle about such things? Why not say we should have equal representation in prison, by gender, ethnicity, sexual persuasion, age? Why not wrangle about paying out social security total lifetime payments equally among gender, race, etc. What is the purpose of trying to get people so motivated to worry about something that is difficult to measure or assign reasons to.

Richard Feynman quotes Showing 1-30 of 636. “Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.”

The moment an instant lasted forever, we were destined for the leading edge of eternity.

I would think that would be obvious-- the benefit of a meritocracy is you get the best science. Discrimination creates a barrier for achieving maximum progress and efficiency because potentially transformative ideas are discouraged from ever coming to light, replaced instead by outmoded preconceptions that don't stand up to the same light of scientific inquiry that such preconceptions serve to dim.

Richard Feynman quotes Showing 1-30 of 636. “Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.”

Exactly why we need as many bright minds, coming from as many directions as possible, to achieve that.

To me, it seems neither difficult to measure, nor difficult to assign reasons to. Those reasons are just uncomfortable for men in power to acknowledge, and hard to change.

I agree that it can be difficult for men to acknowledge, but I’m not sure it has to be men in power. I have encountered many men in positions of power who acknowledged it very strongly, and men who would not normally be considered powerful to have difficulties with it. Of course, you can take the position that all men are inherently in power, so that saying “men in positions of power” is redundant.

Why do we wrangle about such things? Why not say we should have equal representation in prison, by gender, ethnicity, sexual persuasion, age?

Sorry, I think that’s a very bad red herring. We don’t want anyone in prison at all, so I think it is natural to consider what causes a higher imprisonment rate among males or minorities, and try to change those factors to lower the rate. By contrast we want people to go into science, so it’s natural to consider the factors that impede women.

Why do we wrangle about such things? Why not say we should have equal representation in prison, by gender, ethnicity, sexual persuasion, age? Why not wrangle about paying out social security total lifetime payments equally among gender, race, etc. What is the purpose of trying to get people so motivated to worry about something that is difficult to measure or assign reasons to.

We wrangle about it because people who like science and who are good at science are abandoning science as a career, and because those people are explaining in detail why that is happening - in essence, a culture of undermining and asymmetric opportunity. This is not some abstract statistical datum with uncertain causation - it's an identifiable injustice in society. We can debate about the exact figures, but at core it's not difficult to measure, and it's not difficult to assign reasons to. Like climate change, the fact that there's debate about the exact figures cannot reasonably be used as a smokescreen to help deny the problem.

Note:
During life, we all develop attitudes and strategies to make our interactions with others more pleasant and useful. If I mention mine here, those comments can apply only to myself, my experiences and my situation. Such remarks cannot and should not be construed as dismissing, denigrating, devaluing or criticizing any different attitudes and strategies that other people have evolved as a result of their different situation and different experiences.

I do not know a single woman who has never been sexually harassed somewhere. Conversely, though, I know very few women who haven't been told that math and science are for boys, even when they themselves were showing an aptitude at it. Perhaps worse, it was used as an excuse for why a friend of mine was struggling--it's okay; math is for boys. Now, she was never going to work in a field where she needed higher mathematics. She's a writer, and a very good one. But it's still not okay to have told her that rather than get her tutoring.

_____________________________________________
Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

I agree that it can be difficult for men to acknowledge, but I’m not sure it has to be men in power. I have encountered many men in positions of power who acknowledged it very strongly, and men who would not normally be considered powerful to have difficulties with it. Of course, you can take the position that all men are inherently in power, so that saying “men in positions of power” is redundant.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Men have inherent privileges and advantages in society, just for being men*. Most of us are so used to it that we only notice when we lose that advantage, or think we are. That's also why men get in power more than women.

*Or you can say non-males have an inherent disadvantage, it amounts to the same thing, an uneven playing field.

"I'm planning to live forever. So far, that's working perfectly." Steven Wright

I do not know a single woman who has never been sexually harassed somewhere. Conversely, though, I know very few women who haven't been told that math and science are for boys, even when they themselves were showing an aptitude at it. Perhaps worse, it was used as an excuse for why a friend of mine was struggling--it's okay; math is for boys. Now, she was never going to work in a field where she needed higher mathematics. She's a writer, and a very good one. But it's still not okay to have told her that rather than get her tutoring.

Honest question, why are the women in your example being swayed so much by what other people tell them? Why are they giving so much weight to the (wrong) opinion of others?

I feel that as a rule of thumb if you're going to be successful in anything in life you will need to learn to ignore the opinion of idiots. Some of the greatest men and women in history did just that.

In Canada, women are a minority in university mathematics programmes, and this situation has not improved in the past several years. To examine this situation, research was conducted to investigate the experiences of women who might be considered “success stories” in mathematics—those who persevered beyond their initial years of university study—to understand the supports and challenges that they faced. Elise, a master’s student in mathematics, participated in this study. Although by external standards Elise was a very successful student and perhaps even a “model” of a successful woman in this field, her interview provided evidence that she was very anxious and nervous, and felt extreme pressure to succeed and be “perfect”. By examining Elise’s experiences, a better understanding of the tension between Elise’s outward success and internal anxieties can be garnered. Additionally, a re-examination of traditional definitions of women’s success in fields dominated by men is provided. We also discuss considerations that should be taken into account when interacting with high-achieving students.

Meet the space researcher smoothing the path for women in science across Africa: Nature talks to Mirjana Povic, winner of Nature Research’s Inspiring Science Award, about her work fuelling opportunities for women in Africa’s space industry and other fields.
Amber Dance, CAREER Q&A · 30 October 2018

Astrophysicist Mirjana Pović has taught science to orphans in Rwanda, helped to organize a supportive community for women with HIV in Tanzania and contributed to space research in Africa. She has excelled in her own research at the Ethiopian Space Science and Technology Institute in Addis Ababa and the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia in Granada, Spain. For these endeavours, she won Nature Research’s inaugural Inspiring Science Award, one of two prizes developed in partnership with The Estée Lauder Companies. She impressed judges with the depth and breadth of her efforts to encourage women and girls in science, says Magdalena Skipper, chief editorial adviser of Nature Research, editor-in-chief of Nature in London and chief judge of the awards.

"My family in Serbia was poor, and my country was at war as I was growing up. I would never have been able to pursue science without my family’s encouragement, a free university education and a scholarship for my PhD. Children from poor and developing countries should know that their lives can change, but it’s not enough that they work hard. It’s fundamental to have support from society. Access to education is the first step."

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
— Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (1883)

I do not know a single woman who has never been sexually harassed somewhere.

Emphasis on the harassed. It's not a hot topic of conversation among my male friends, but I'd bet we too have all been the subjects of unwanted sexualized speech and/or physical contact. (God knows, I was groped and propositioned on more or less a nightly basis when waiting tables back in the 70s.)
The difference is the direction in which the "power" arrow points. When I was a server, I felt hassled to the extent it was unpleasant and interfered with my job, but I was not physically intimidated and these women had essentially no power over my continued employment (I hesitate to say "career progression"). In later life, I almost always had the social power advantage too, and the women concerned were actually taking a risk by doing what they were doing, since it was within my power to make their lives quite unpleasant.

While I do wish women would stop doing it, they are most often doing it from a position of power disadvantage that renders it less toxic than the abuses of power we see coming most commonly from males.

Note:
During life, we all develop attitudes and strategies to make our interactions with others more pleasant and useful. If I mention mine here, those comments can apply only to myself, my experiences and my situation. Such remarks cannot and should not be construed as dismissing, denigrating, devaluing or criticizing any different attitudes and strategies that other people have evolved as a result of their different situation and different experiences.

Honest question, why are the women in your example being swayed so much by what other people tell them? Why are they giving so much weight to the (wrong) opinion of others?

I feel that as a rule of thumb if you're going to be successful in anything in life you will need to learn to ignore the opinion of idiots. Some of the greatest men and women in history did just that.

You have clearly never been in a situation that might as well be designed to prevent you from doing something. Yes. Certain strong people overcome it. But for every Martin Luther King, how many people just dealt with Jim Crow because that was the system and they didn't feel strong enough to stop it? And when you've been told something since you were a child, you can come to believe it yourself. And still further, there can come a time when you just don't feel like dealing with the idiots anymore and you walk away because you'd like to keep yourself mentally healthy.

_____________________________________________
Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

Honest question, why are the women in your example being swayed so much by what other people tell them? Why are they giving so much weight to the (wrong) opinion of others?

I'd guess you haven't been undermined much in life, if you have to ask that question. It's not the opinion of an occasional passing idiot that's the problem, it's a societal attitude. "People like you cannot do things like this." The message is pervasive, because it's a general assumption. You find yourself buying into it subliminally.
White males (at least, non-poor white males) move in an environment in which they receive positive societal messages about what they can do and what they're entitled to. That's not the experience of most of the world's population.

Note:
During life, we all develop attitudes and strategies to make our interactions with others more pleasant and useful. If I mention mine here, those comments can apply only to myself, my experiences and my situation. Such remarks cannot and should not be construed as dismissing, denigrating, devaluing or criticizing any different attitudes and strategies that other people have evolved as a result of their different situation and different experiences.

This is what I have been talking about. Women are not some weakling that we need to save. In fact, from my perspective, if they want something they will go get it.

Must disagree based on experience. I have seen and heard women demeaned by race and gender. If women want something, there is quite often a man or two standing in the way, presenting them with either a flat refusal or a threat, or a sexual quid-pro-quo. We don't need to save women. Men need to respect them and offer them equal opportunities. That's all. AND we need to "move aside" those men who would deliberately get in their way for reasons of bigotry and greed. Interpret that quoted part as you wish.

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
— Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (1883)

This is what I have been talking about. Women are not some weakling that we need to save. In fact, from my perspective, if they want something they will go get it.

I guess you haven't been undermined or discriminated against much, either. Characterizing women as if they're all Xena Warrior Princess is just as stereotypical as suggesting they're all frightened mice. (And, to my mind, a counterproductive aspect of the current enthusiastic trend for "kickass heroines" in film.)
What we need is for women to be afforded the same opportunities and encouragement to "go get" stuff as men.

Note:
During life, we all develop attitudes and strategies to make our interactions with others more pleasant and useful. If I mention mine here, those comments can apply only to myself, my experiences and my situation. Such remarks cannot and should not be construed as dismissing, denigrating, devaluing or criticizing any different attitudes and strategies that other people have evolved as a result of their different situation and different experiences.

I guess you haven't been undermined or discriminated against much, either. Characterizing women as if they're all Xena Warrior Princess is just as stereotypical as suggesting they're all frightened mice. (And, to my mind, a counterproductive aspect of the current enthusiastic trend for "kickass heroines" in film.)
What we need is for women to be afforded the same opportunities and encouragement to "go get" stuff as men.

Grant Hutchison

Are you kidding? People have struggles every day. I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm discriminated against because of my gender, or because I am a male nurse that I might be gay. The nursing profession is set up as multitasking to the Nth degree which is difficult for me. When a cop pulls me over for speeding I get a ticket. If I was embezzling from a company I would go to prison and not have it covered up. Doctors who don't want to follow policy give me crap all the time. Managers who want to dictate by email give me warnings when I ask for written policies. I'm told I can't care for certain patients because I'm male even though this is illegal. Most people have struggles every day in the real world. It is hard.

The moment an instant lasted forever, we were destined for the leading edge of eternity.

while sexual harassment is definitely playing a part in low percentage of women in STEM I think that it is also due to other factors. Most of the females I know are simply not interested in science and math, even in the face of a lot of encouragement from teachers and parents for them to pursue these fields. I don't think there's anything wrong with this, we shouldn't try to force people into topics they are not interested in, and definitely not make them feel like there's something wrong with then due to their lack of interest.

Note:
During life, we all develop attitudes and strategies to make our interactions with others more pleasant and useful. If I mention mine here, those comments can apply only to myself, my experiences and my situation. Such remarks cannot and should not be construed as dismissing, denigrating, devaluing or criticizing any different attitudes and strategies that other people have evolved as a result of their different situation and different experiences.